Abstract:

The study was done in order to find out if Web Services are a good integration technology, especially for Customer Relationship ManagementSystems. It was examined the common Enterprise Application Integration architectures and integration problems. Furthermore, it was studied carefully the Web Services technology and it´s advantages and caveats, not to forget the emerging Web Services standards. It was taken a look at commonly available integration alternatives for Customer Relationship Management systems and try to position Web Services besides the others. It was studied a case example of a common Customer Relationship Management system and evaluate and test its real Web Services capabilities. It was examined common pain points, notably performance and security and integration costs. It was identified use cases when Web Services are a suitable or advantageous integration technology. The result was, that Web Services are indeed a useful tool for application integration, but one that needs to be implemented only after ensuring the suitability. Web Services are usable already at this stage for simple information enquiries or simple updates, preferably ones that have the possibility for user-initiated retry. Web Services are useful for retrieving all kinds of content updates across heterogeneous systems. On the other hand, Web Services can in almost no situation replace Enterprise Application Integration solutions but will have to be considered as extensions to them.